Justice delayed: How immigration and drug cases have created a judicial emergency in Texas

A skyrocketing number of immigration and drug cases along the U.S.-Mexico border and delays in nominating and confirming judges to fill vacancies are creating a judicial emergency in Texas and other Southwest states, federal officials say.

“The case load is enormous,” said Chief District Judge Fred Biery of the San Antonio-based U.S. Western District of Texas.

Some border courts are so burdened by the increase in cases that Chief Justice John Roberts said in an annual report on the judiciary that there is an “urgent need” to handle the problems.

And the problem with the rising caseloads is compounded by vacancies.

In Texas alone there are seven vacant U.S. judgeships — four that serve the border region in El Paso, San Antonio and Laredo.

But Texas is not alone. Other states are grappling with an explosion of new cases brought on by an increase in law enforcement activity as the federal government seeks to better secure the Southwest border.

Judge John Roll , chief U.S. district judge in Arizona, was at a Tucson shopping center to talk with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords , D-Ariz., about the rising caseload when he was shot and killed by an assailant last week.

Biery said Roll’s wife said the judge was there “trying to get extra help.”

“Perhaps out of this tragedy people will focus on what is going on down here,” Biery said.

Statistics show that in Texas, case filings in 2010 jumped 10 percent to 8,244 in the Western District, which includes San Antonio, Del Rio, Presidio and El Paso, according to the U.S. Administrative Office of the Courts.

Biery said the increase is often disproportionate to the number of judges

assigned to specific locales. The one federal judge in Del Rio is handling

2,000 cases a year while 4,000 cases are split among four judges in El Paso.

In the Houston-based Southern District of Texas, which includes Laredo and

the Rio Grande Valley, the caseload jumped 9 percent to 8,167.

Because of two judicial vacancies in Laredo, the number of cases pending at

the end of 2010 were 5,875 — a nearly 15 percent increase over 2009.

The U.S. District of Arizona saw a 67 percent increase in cases filed —

from 3,769 in 2009 to 6,277 in 2010; and in the District of New Mexico there

was an 18 percent increase, from 3,015 to 3,575.

AP photo

Sen. Barbara Boxer

The Southern District of California reported a 5 percent decrease from the

4,805 cases filed in 2009.

But a vacancy there is creating a backlog of cases pending and clogging the